KISS OFF OF THE SPIDER WOMAN: LOST, EPISODE 3.14 – “EXPOSE”

THOUGHTS & THEORIESIt seems we’ve met yet another pair of cons marooned on that island: Nikki and Paulo. They join Sawyer and Kate as those with mysterious and criminal pasts.

I may not be a forensic expert, but worrying about leaving behind cigarette ashes as evidence after killing a guy and then opening a safe without gloves is pretty damn stupid.

How close could Nikki & Paulo have really been if she wasn’t aware that he was stashing a bag of diamonds in his boxer briefs, and she never smelled the nicotine gum he was secretly chewing?

In Season One, Kate sent Sawyer into that same body of water to find the briefcase with the guns. Knowing how much Sawyer likes to pilfer through other people’s belongings and then claim them as his own, you would think that he would dive down there on many occasions in search of loot. How could he not have seen Nikki’s bag and found the diamonds?

After Boone & Shannon ran into Nikki & Paulo at the airport before boarding Flight 815, Shannon told Boone to stop flirting with random guys. Either she was just being bitchy Shannon, or that was the producers’ not-so-subtle way of informing us that Boone was indeed the island’s gay character (which would be kind of creepy, considering that he had slept with step-sister Shannon).

After the last scene on her show, Expose, Nikki made the comment that “you know what happens to guest stars.” Nice inside joke, now that she and Paulo have joined Boone, Shannon, Libby and Ana Lucia in that category.

After reading Nikki’s Expose script, Hurley said that the identity of the Cobra on that show, who was supposed to be a good guy, had been shrouded in mystery for 4 seasons. Duh. The producers are letting us know that either the identity of “Him” and/or “Jacob” will be revealed next season on LOST, or that one of our Losties is really a bad guy after all.

Poor Locke. You know he’d be bummed to find out that Nikki & Paulo discovered the Pearl Station and yellow plane before he did.

Last season, when Locke found the Pearl Station, there were recently smoked cigarette butts on the tables in front of the television monitors. Did Paulo find cigarettes while rummaging through the luggage in search of the diamonds, and then go to that hatch for secret smoke breaks??

Do you think that Paulo failed to mention that he saw Ben and Juliet in the Pearl Hatch on purpose, or that he really didn’t know who Shepard, Ford and Austen were (since he knew them as Jack, Sawyer and Kate)?

Did Paulo ever actually use the walkie-talkie he found in the Pearl? Did he communicate with the Others? He doesn’t seem like the sharpest knife in the drawer, so it’s quite possible that he was manipulated and/or tricked by the Others into providing information about his fellow survivors.

The infamous ‘monster’ sound appeared after Nikki threw the spider at Paulo, followed by the baby spiders that then bit her. Were the baby spiders this week’s Black Smoke Monster Manifestation? After all, right before dying at the hands of the Black Smoke Monster That Was His Brother Yemi, Eko told Locke that “they were next,” and Nikki & Paulo were there when that happened.

Before (apparently) dying, what do you think Nikki said to Hurley and Sawyer: a) Paulo Lies, b) Parallel Lives, c) Power Lines or d) Paralyzed? The answer is: Paralyzed. Which is quite an interesting term to use in light of the fact that last week’s episode was all about the formerly paralyzed Locke…

Did Vincent the dog remove the blanket that was covering Nikki & Paulo because he sensed that they were still alive?

Geez, Jack is nowhere to be found and folks get buried alive based on an assumption that they look dead. They need the Doc back, stat.

Are both Nikki and Paulo dead? No. Not yet, anyway. It was no secret that one character was being killed off of the show last night, and clearly that was Paulo. It didn’t help that Rodrigo Santoro, who plays Paulo, gave an interview a few months ago to the Brazil version of Rolling Stone Magazine that said his character was going to die this season. I’m sure the producers were less than thrilled when that tidbit hit the Internet…

FORESHADOWING

While opening the safe, in Nikki’s Anti-Smoking PSA Moment, she tells Paulo that they already poised Zuckerman, so they shouldn’t poison themselves. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Foreshadowing.

But wait, there’s more! After meeting Boone & Shannon at the airport, Paulo tells Nikki that he hopes they don’t turn out like them. Oops, you did. Bye-bye now.

AND…when Nikki tells Paulo to climb up to the small yellow plane and he refuses, she makes fun of him for preferring to go down into a dark tunnel instead. Our friend Locke did the exact same thing; he sent Boone up to the plane (and to his death) and didn’t even hesitate to blow the hatch door to explore the thing once he discovered it.

Paulo is from Brazil, and the two men in Penny Widmore’s listening station were speaking Portuguese? Coincidence? I think not.

Dr. Artz discovered many new species of bugs on the island. More than likely, they were born or manufactured in the zoological station/hatch on the other island (with the empty aquarium tanked that housed Jack as a prisoner and the bear cages that held Kate and Sawyer).

Charlie is toast. You just know that Jin will find out about his abduction of Sun.

Let’s see…the late Mikhail was Russian and Nikki’s diamonds were hidden in Russian stacking dolls. Interesting.

Hurley Numbers Alert! The diamonds are worth $8 million and the spider bite paralyzes for 8 hours.

In an island flashback, they made a point to remind us that Jack used to have the key to the guns around his neck. Nikki took the key from around Zuckerman’s neck after killing him.

Last week in my LOST blog, I posted the above photo of what I thought was Sayid discovering an underwater cable. Yeah, I was wrong. It was Paulo diving for the diamond bag. Yawn.

Between Sun last night and the preview for next week’s episode…Women of LOST: 2, Men of LOST: 0. The island ladies are kicking some serious ass lately, and it’s about time.